If you ever have the chance to visit China, liang fen is a must-eat street food. It’s a dish of slippery mung bean jelly with a wonderful savory sauce, most of the time with aromatic chili oil. Depending on the region, the way of making and cutting the bean curd and blending the sauce may be slightly different. But the one thing they have in common is that they’re all so full of flavor and so delicious that you’ll crave more as soon as you finish!
The Xi’an Famous Foods Cookbook
Today, I’m sharing the liang fen recipe from the Xi’an Famous Foods cookbook by Jason Wang. In case you haven’t heard, Xi’an Famous Foods is a restaurant chain of fast casual-style Chinese restaurants in NYC. It’s very impressive to me that they are one of the few restaurants serving truly authentic Northwestern Chinese dishes and they’ve made it wildly popular. Different from the usual takeout dishes you usually see in Chinese restaurants in the US, they serve boiled lamb dumplings, cumin lamb noodles, and Northern-style pork burgers (Rou Jia Mo). These dishes are lesser known outside of China but they’re the type of dishes I ate growing up. I feel grateful that Jason, the owner of Xi’an Famous Foods, brought this real-deal regional food to New York and made it into a huge trend. The latest cookbook by Jason brings the most popular flavors of northwest China to the rest of the world. It’s filled with recipes for the signature dishes of the region, with some cultural perspective from Jason. I highly recommend the cookbook, no matter whether you’re looking for an immersive cultural experience or just want to put a few authentic Chinese dishes on your dinner table.
What is Liang Fen
Liang fen is one of the many incredible recipes you’ll find in the pages of this fantastic book. To describe liang fen, it’s a bit like big fat noodles that are made from strands of bean jelly. They’re usually semi-translucent and are topped with a delightful savory chili-oil based sauce with some fresh, crunchy garnishes. They’re a bit slippery to grab with chopsticks but the refreshing texture is a lot of fun to eat. This liang fen recipe is hot and spicy yet soothingly cool, an ideal treat for summertime, yet something you’ll want year-round. As Wang puts it in his cookbook, “It’s (Liang Fun) what I would consider junk food, except tastier than a bag of Doritos (there, I said it).”
Ingredients
What’s great about liang fen is that this cold noodle dish doesn’t contain any wheat. It is usually made from rice or bean starches so if you’re gluten-free, you can happily and safely enjoy liang fen. It really does put the “fun” back in food!
Mung bean starch
Homemade chili oil
The chili oil is a key ingredient in this recipe, so I highly recommend making your own.
Cooking process
Making Liang Fen at home is easier than you think, although it does require a bit of planning because the bean curd takes some time to cool.
How to serve and store
Liang Fen is a street food that you can snack on at any time of the day. You can also serve it as a cold appetizer as part of a big meal, since you can make it ahead of time. Once it’s been made, the mung bean curd will stay good in the fridge for a couple of days. In China, street vendors always mix the sauce right before serving it. But you can totally mix everything together ahead of time and serve the dish later.
Afterthoughts
The recipe is from Xi’an Famous Foods cookbook by Jason Wang, but I did double the sauce. Since Jason compared this dish to Doritos, I figured I might as well go all-in 🙂
